When we think of new life we most often think of brand new life, like a baby or a puppy or a kitten. Sometime we even allow ourselves the awarness to think of new life as spring flowers and budding trees that come from a long dorment winters sleep. However, it is less often to think of a new life coming out of something we believe to be dead, and a stump implies something dead. A stump implies infestation that killed the living tree and now all that remains is the base of what was once thriving. So how does what is dead bring new life?

This is the expectation of Isaiah’s words. He didn’t say new life would come as a brand new beginning. He didn’t say new life that coming from a dorment sleep. He said, ” A shoot shall come out from the stump.”

When a tree that has been infested with bugs and has rotted away from the decay, that stump in our mind is fininshed, but the stump of Jesse? This family tree of Abraham,through Isaac through Jacob through the 12 descendants, the nation of Israel, through king David and Solomon and generations of people, yes, the ax named babylon took a swing, scattering the splinters accross the land, but the sprouts would not be denied. The thing they thought that was finished had yet really to be born,

This branch will gather and unite not just a natation. It will find its roots growing and spreading beyond boundaries of ethnicity and boundaries of gender, beyond the untraditional ways of thinking about God’s plan of salvation. This new branch will invite, This new branch, he will welcome. He will call out in the name of the father forgive them, and what looks like the end, the judgment cast by humans wise, will in fact be a new beginning. God’s righteous judgement prevaling. From swaddeling clothes to the hanging tree, the majesty of new life from a stump will be.